Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved floor frame assembly for prefabricated manufactured homes.
Currently available manufactured homes, with their improved construction methods and quality control, can now closely approximate the look and feel of a conventionally built home, and can be constructed at a substantial savings compared to a conventionally built home. In addition, some available units accommodate the wishes of customers who prefer the larger and wider floor space afforded by traditional homes by building the manufactured homes in modules or sections that are shipped to the home site and joined together on an existing foundation to form a double-wide home.
Typically, each half of the home comes equipped complete with exterior and interior walls and flooring, a roof, and many fixtures including the plumbing and appliances. An axle and wheel assembly is attached to each half so that the unit can be separately towed to the home site and joined together over an existing foundation. Accordingly, the floor frame assembly must be strong enough to support the assembled home over a typical foundation, and must also be strong enough to survive the rigors of being shipped from the factory to the home site without excessive flexing, which could damage the superstructure, the interior walls, and the fixtures. Furthermore, the floor frame must be designed so that the two halves can be readily joined together at the home site with a minimum of additional on-site labor.
Floor frame assemblies for shipping manufactured homes are generally well known in the art, offering a wide variety of designs, some of which include recent developments in ease of assembly and integrity of structure. One such improved frame assembly is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,814 assigned to Schult Homes Corp, which is expressly incorporated herein by reference. The frame assembly includes a plurality of interconnected I-beams and transverse beams positioned orthogonally to each other. In such an arrangement, the outer transverse beams are each independently connected, via a substantially vertical hanger member, to a sill plate assembly which extends around and is tied to the perimeter of the foundation. Although the floor frame assembly of U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,814 includes some desirable attributes with respect to its overall design by achieving a degree of frame stiffness not realized by other known systems, improvements were desired. For instance, because a separate hanger is attached to a different one of the outer transverse beams, the transverse beams each carry a section of the floor load independent of the other transverse edge beams, i.e., each of the outer transverse beams are individual outrigger members. As a result, each outer transverse beam must be separately aligned when the frame is mounted to the floor. Also, in such an arrangement the sill plate assembly is susceptible to rotating relative to the foundation during back filling of earth against the foundation wall.
Assembling known systems is relatively labor-intensive. Although the attachment of the hangers of U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,814 to the sill plate assembly is facilitated by its design, factory labor must still crawl underneath the system and manipulate a tool(s) around the transverse edge supports to fasten the hangers back into an upwardly-extending section of the sill plate assembly. Other systems include a perimeter support beam that has upper and lower flanges and a longitudinally extending vertical web, thus affording no access from outside the structure to the members of the frame structure beneath the floor. Therefore, certain components of the frame structure must be assembled by crawling underneath the structure. These operations are extremely awkward and time-consuming, thus adding difficulty, expense and inefficiency to the assembly of the system.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a manufactured home floor frame assembly that is unitized such that the outside transverse edge supports are collectively attached, the transverse members remain aligned and which is adapted for ready assembly with a like floor frame unit to form a double-wide manufactured home by including fasteners that can be efficiently attached.